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Moving Up the IP Video Ladder
Five Steps to Success
Security dealer integrators and end users alike need to start planning for the transition to IP video. In its latest report on the video surveillance market, JP Freeman expects the production of IP cameras to exceed analog cameras by the third quarter of 2008. With manufacturers growing their line of IP equipment and investing in new features the time has come to ask these questions below so that you can make the process of stepping up to IP video a success.
1) Why IP video? This is a key question, and one that not enough people think through. When it comes to IP video, there seem to be two consistent answers: Total cost of ownership (TCO) or quality.
Yes, an IP-based system can have a lower TCO. The reason stems from using the existing IT infrastructure and knowledge that most companies have already purchased. The IT industry, for example, uses standardized low cost cabling.
“One Cat-5 cable can replace the three cables normally required to hookup an analog PTZ camera,” says Eric Fullerton, President of Milestone Systems. While the IP camera itself may today be more expensive than its analog equivalent, the difference often gets made up in the installation.
IP-based systems can also use network and computer equipment that the company has paid for and knows how to use, thus saving significant long-term duplicate costs. Quality is the other big reason to move to IP video. Using network-based cameras opens the opportunity to move to the latest in high performance video. High resolution, progressive scan cameras are not available in analog, and make a huge difference in the ability to capture details of an incident.
People are tired of video looking like the unrecognizable faces in a convenience store tape on the 6 o'clock news. “My vision is that (high resolution) will be the driving factor for IP video adoption,” says Ed Chandler, Chairman of Security By Design. “There is a consistent complaint that security video isn't good enough.”
There are other benefits as well. Most digital video recorders (DVR) today have the ability to sit on the corporate network and allow remote video viewing from any computer. They often run afoul of the IT folks, however, since many are built using a Windows operating system without the ability to use the standard management tools IT demands for virus and patch control.
